Bhubaneswar, June 19: The Centre has stopped funding under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) to six districts where the CBI is currently conducting investigations in connection with the alleged irregularities and misappropriation of funds.
These six districts are Balangir, Kalahandi, Koraput, Nabrangpur, Nuapada and Rayagada. The CBI inquiry started after the state government and the Centre gave their consent to the probe following the intervention of the Supreme Court. The court acted on a PIL filed by the Centre for Environment and Food Security (CESF), an NGO.
Commissioner of panchayati raj department, S.K. Lohani said: 'The Centre has stopped funding under the MGNREGS in these six districts.
“However, it has released funds to the tune of Rs 529 crore under the scheme for the other 24 districts.'
Meanwhile, last week the state government sent an action taken report on the effective implementation of the MGNREGS in these six districts. The report was sent to D.K. Jain, joint secretary, ministry of rural development.
In its report, the state government has stated that on the basis of the National Institute of Rural Development survey report in the six districts, action has been taken against 19 officials under Section 25 of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act while departmental action was initiated against 46 officials.
An amount of Rs 2,38,827 was also recovered from 29 officials.
Similarly, on the basis of the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General, departmental action has been taken against 40 officials and recovery has been made from 42 officials to the tune of Rs 1,77,337.
The state has also informed the Centre that there have been large-scale transfers of six districts' programme officers, project directors and district rural development agencies recently. In order to further strengthen the monitoring system, the state government is in the process of adopting an electronic Funds Management Systems (e-FMS) and transaction based MIS (Management Information System) on the pattern of Andhra Pradesh.
